Occurrence and Duration of Pauses in Relation to Speech Tempo and Structural Organization in Two Speech Genres

Pauses act as important acoustic cues to prosodic phrase boundaries. However, the distribution and phonetic characteristics of pauses have not yet been fully described either cross-linguistically or in different genres speech styles within languages. The current study examines pausal performance 24 Czech speakers two read speech: news reading poetry reciting. pause rate duration are related genre differences, overt covert text organization, tempo. We found a significant effect several levels including strong punctuation. This was reflected both measures performance. A grammatically informed analysis subset smallest units revealed contribution for only. An tempo reciting at macro level (speaker averages) but when were observed individually. Genre differences did manifest consistently analogically measures. findings provide evidence that pausing is used systematically by convey only phrasing also structure, among other things.